What a busy week! With winter break fast approaching the school is buzzing with activity, cookie baking, gingerbread houses, wreaths made of cranberries and popcorn and more. Amidst the hustle and bustle we celebrated our new murals with a special unveiling celebration for the artists...our students and Tony Ortega. Kathryn made some incredible sugar cookies with the afternoon class, employing colors inspired by the murals! The students shared their culinary treats with Tony during a wonderful, song-filled assembly.In the studio we continued many of our existing activities and added a few more. Some of the older students began exploring a new medium, water-soluble oil pastels. We talked about composition and introduced the process of blending. The students are eager to keep experimenting.
I introduced charcoal this week and we had a fun conversation about its origins. Some students announced that charcoal was used to fuel trains, others thought in was inside chimneys and others expressed more fantastical ideas of its origins. We talked about the many tools we get from nature and how charcoal is left over from a fire, pressed and formed for us to draw with. This led to some eager, messy explorations. The student pictured here spent twenty minutes meticulously transforming a white sheet of paper into coal black (with intermittent hand washing).
Watercolor has an increasing appeal. We are exploring wax resists with white oil crayons and liquid watercolor on the easel and there are large cake watercolors set out on a work table with pencils for continued exploration and expression.

We have added a large block building area to the studio, which has been received with enthusiasm and lots of collaborative structures and demolitions.

Next week is shortened due to Winter-break. We plan to continue many of the same activities for indepth exploration.